Educators and Teachers

On the front lines of preparing students for careers of today and the future are teachers. Over the last several years, manufacturing has supported opportunities for teachers to provide meaningful career exploration activities for their students, provide relevant material in their classrooms, assisted with mentoring teams for competitions, and provided teachers with professional development opportunities.

Whatever it is young people are passionate about, be it cars or computers or music or art, they can find a great career doing it in today’s modern manufacturing. But, in order to attract Pennsylvania’s best and brightest to one of manufacturing’s many exciting sectors — from engineering to programming machine tools — we need your help. Recent studies show that more than 80% of manufacturers say their biggest problem is finding qualified workers. This shortage of workers could have a serious impact on our nation’s and our state’s economy.

Lesson Plans

Advanced technologies, especially in manufacturing, can be a disruptive force in the marketplace, providing innovation, change, and positive impact to the world. But disrupting an entire curriculum in order to infuse manufacturing into the classroom is challenging or downright impossible.

This is why Catalyst Connection, with funding from the Benedum Foundation, hired local teachers for two summers to create mini-lessons that can infuse manufacturing and career exploration into your classrooms. These lessons, available in a variety of subjects and grade levels, are available to you free of charge to use in your classrooms!

These lessons:

Give you lessons you can use to enhance the teaching of various subject matter

Give you peace of mind in implementing these lessons as they were created by other local teachers and proven to work in their classrooms